smarter than the average bare...a big bunch of writing by chelsea g. summers

26 September 2007

on looking for the first time upon a special, special hell

You know, I had an abstract notion that this was a big deal. Somehow, even with me, a woman who’d never really envisioned this sort of thing in her life—I just never really thought it could happen to me; I never thought of myself as that kind of girl; I was too young for this; I had so much living to do—but somehow, even with me, the slimmest shard of cognizance had permeated the dense overgrowth of my bushy consciousness.

I knew it was, you know, kind of a big deal. I just didn’t think it would be this big. This epic. This, you know, humungous. I quail, I blench, I recoil, for I stare into the abyss that is wedding planning.

It’s only the second day, and I’m already to throw myself on pointy objects. I could impale my sternum with my pen. I could rip the spiral coil from my spanky new planner and jam it into my carotid. A flash of pain, a few bright spurts of primary-colored blood, and done. No more emailing venues. No more quick-patter sales pitches from women named “Andrea” and “Porfira.” No more scanning menus for edibles. No more price points. No more worrying about locating an officiator to validate the plighting of my undying devotion to Donny for all of my natural life until we are nothing but dust and the faded sepia memories of our adopted offspring.

And most importantly, no more having to look for a band to play at my reception.

I love remakes. I hate covers. (Unless it’s Television’s lugubriously slavish reproduction of The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” which is something altogether another thing.) Wedding bands do nothing but slavish covers. It makes me break out in aural hives. I’m just a modern girl; of course, I’ve had it in the ear before. Is it too much to ask to find a band that a) doesn’t suck and b) will play something other than “At Last” and the hits of the seventies, eighties and nineties? It seems it is.

In the sojourn that is this wedding, I am Odysseus, and I fear to cross the river not Acheron but Styxx.

I console myself with these two thoughts. First, I hold close to my breast the secret knowledge that one of my ex-students is busily transposing The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” for her chamber music ensemble to play as my processional song. And, second, I chuckle all evil-like with the knowledge that Donny will not recognize the song when it plays and we glide separately down the aisle. It will be my private Idaho, my funnish pun, my joke that only I and a handful of my closest friends will get. I giggle even now.

Mostly, I’m hoping that it will keep me from weeping as I walk. (Update: I have discarded my concept of a $129 Target gown for one in which I wear something in a fetching arterial crimson. That image helps me with my almost completely inevitable weeping too.) I am an abundant crier. I wonder how a judiciously placed Zoloft would go down.

Seriously, I’ve been weeping listening to the MP3s of the various wedding bands attached to sundry sites. I can’t tell if I’m weeping from embarrassment or emotion or both. Probably both. This whole thing is so surreal I fear my head will simply implode like a television set. Or explode like one of Gallagher’s watermelons.

See, the thing is that I’m utterly unprepared for this. I never was the kind of girl who imagined her wedding, beyond a vague Barbara-Walters-hazy lens way. No details have ever been in sharp focus. I’ve only three friends who have themselves married. I was once a nominal bridesmaid in a traditional Thai ceremony. Now, were I in a space to pick four of my closest friends to be the four pillars of the gold and the silver gates, or were it necessary for me to explain the joining Donny’s and my hands with flowers or to ask the congregated to bless us with Rod Nam Sang, I’d be all set. I’d be all over that shit, yo.

Sadly, that is not the case.

And if it’s not already bad enough that I feel unequal to the task of being a traditional bride, I also find myself unable to be a very good non-conformist bride either. There will be no Ewoks, no Renaissance dress, no head-dress of ribbons and multi-colored ponytails. I don’t plan on a goth wedding cake, and I most likely will not be wearing black nailpolish. I will probably be wearing high-heel boots. I would like Donny’s and my dance to be a tango. But other than that, I’m feeling relatively conventional.

Which brings me back to the wedding band issue. It always comes back to the band.

I should note that Donny has already nixed the following wedding concepts: choosing the New York Aquarium as our venue; using our dogs as ring-bearers; providing shiny cockrings as both napkin rings and wedding favors; and having two wedding cakes—one to eat and one to walk through barefoot. I don’t know how he expects people to have fun with no walruses or squished icing. But I guess we’ll make do.

At the end of the day, that’s all I want—fun for everyone, even if it all passes me by in a blur. And good food. And some passable music. And maybe a stripper pole on the dance floor. Nothing says “festive” like drunk folk and centrifugal force.

The last wedding I was at was DJed by a bridesmaid, some rented speakers, and the iPods of the wedding party. To be fair, it was a grad student wedding. But everyone seemed to have a good time out on the dance floor, and there was no band-hassle.

Al I'm saying is that you could do worse than to pull some strings and find yourself an aspiring DJ who knows his/her stuff.

Okay, so, yeah, I guess you needed to beat me over the head with it, but I assume that Donny popped the question, as it were? A big congratulations to you, then. (Unless I'm horribly, horribly wrong, and you're planning a wedding that hasn't been proposed yet...)

My advice to you is this: If Donny (being a guy) is asked by you (being a girl) what he thinks about some wedding-related item, and he responds thusly, in the tradition of men everywhere...

"I don't care."

...it doesn't mean he doesn't love you. It just means he really, really, truly has no opinion on the matter. Men don't go in for subtext that much.

Oooh, I'm just giddy for you. If a 6'2", 220 lb. bearded man nicknamed "Bear" can be giddy, that is...

In fact he has not "popped" the question. He--and I--both wait for the ring, presumably. I don't know when it's going to happen; I just know it's going to. It's a de facto proposal, but I still want it.

And, yeah, I can read my man's reactions, thanks. I know indifference when I see it. I also can't believe he doesn't want walruses at his nuptials, but his ways are different from mine, and love means not always getting your way, even with sea mammals.

Oh, sister, do I feel your pain. A couple years ago, I too found a man I didn't really entirely believe existed anymore, with whom I found myself having a relationship I didn't really entirely believe existed anymore. Like you, I said yes, yes, holy fucking shit, YES. Like you, I discovered that meant I had to enter what you have so aptly named "a special, special hell."

Here's what I offer you for advice:

1. Plan on things not going perfectly, and dig it.
2. Get someone the two of you really dig to get ordained via the internet to officiate. Work with him/her to write a ceremony that means something to you.
3. Take feedback and help from anyone whose taste you trust, who has also proven themselves consistently to treat you with the kind of respect you like best.
4. Take no feedback or advice you don't like.
5. Build a metaphorical wall around those parts of the wedding that matter most to you and your man. Build that metaphorical wall twelve feet high and six feet thick. Do not let anyone beyond that wall until you open the gates on the day of the wedding. This is where you keep whatever it is that is sacred to you safe from any outside influence, however well-intended or even ultimately useful it might be.
6. Fuck often, well, and happily in the months to come. Go see bands you like as much as you can. Whatever it is that you do for fun, do it a lot.

I wish you all the joy you can get, and may what difficulty will surely come your way be productive and fleeting. As much as I loathed, loathed, loathed wedding planning, somehow we really did end up with pretty much exactly the wedding we wanted. It was no doubt different from the one you'll have in the details, but it was the same as the one you write that you want in its heart: "fun for everyone, even if it all passes me by in a blur. And good food. And some passable music. And maybe a stripper pole on the dance floor. Nothing says “festive” like drunk folk and centrifugal force."

Thank you for all the solid advice. I suppose that I can now return half of my how-to bridal books now.

And, yeah, Bn'B, it had occurred to me that I might be pressing things forward a bit faster than my man had in mind, but he's very good at telling me when he's not pleased, and so far, he's said nothing but "Ok" to my sallying forth with my plans. Except for the walruses, the dogs, the cockring and the walk-through cake. He's definitely said a big fat nope to all that.

OK, usual rarified comment will now be replaced by emotional mush: this post made me cry! I am that girl right now, who has never once imagined her wedding, who has always cynically scoffed at love and brides and monogamy ... but you sound so happy and so real, that it actually got through to the romantic side that is buried deeply under all the scar tissue and the over-intellectualization. I wish you all the best!!!!!!!

Ahhh... That special hell of wedding planning. My best friend still tells me that was the worst year and a half of his life.

I can't tell you much, as I spent most of the 9 month prior to my wedding sick as all get out, thinking I was going die before the damn day came. That said, it was a lovely day aside from the whole groom-seeing-me-before-the-appointed-time thing which left me weeping in the make up place on my photographer's shoulder.

Make it about what YOU two want. Find a way to do it so that the family doesn't realize how crazy you are, but do it. Write the ceremony yourself (or steal pieces you like from others). Be prepared for all the little problems that will come up, find a way to avoid or solve most of them, and don't worry about the rest. And make sure you both turn your cell phones off. *cough*

Above all else, make the reception as laid back as possible, and do yourself a huge favor and spend time with people other then your husband. You will have forever with him - which is awesome - but you will have only that one party to celebrate your marriage with others (until you hit a big ol' fat numbered anniversary) so celebrate it up. Enjoy the tears your mother cries, the knowing smiles of your girlfriends. Kiss and hug and dance with as many people as you can. Steal a moment where you sit and look into the eye of every person that's there who is important to you, because you will treasure those memories. Big life events only happen a few times: birth (which you don't remember), graduations, weddings and funerals (which you don't get to be at). Celebrate, rejoice and remember life is good.

1. Oddly enough, a wedding isn't about you. As a deliberately public event, it is about your family and friends, mostly your family, so you will inherently feel imposed upon. The whole public bit is for them, not you, live with it. For example, nobody gets or really cares about your devotion to this or that band, or really wants to hear it, they just want to dance and get laid (weddings being good for that and all). So crap music is in order. And oh yeah, like anything familyish, it ain't gonna be perfect, there will be at least one catastrophe along the way, and at least one relative with a nose out of joint at the end. Wouldn't be a successful wedding otherwise.

2. The reason society makes weddings stressful and nasty, as my father in law told me at the time, is to discourage you from doing it more than once.

Oh, and a freebie for "Donny"

3) The best piece of advice I ever got was from my father in law, past president (deceased) of HASL (Husbands Are a Sorry Lot): the first thing you do, you get out of bed in the morning? Apologize. You may not know what for, but for sure there is something. Be sorry for it, acknowledge your uselessness, and promise to try and do better. I think that while this is biased towards men, it applies to both aliens.

Man, I can't BELIEVE that you are buying into all of this "princess for a day" crap. This ain't "Cinderella," it's YOUR LIFE. The story doesn't end with the wedding, it BEGINS. Trust me. Write up a pre-nup, go get married at the J.P., and have a big party for your friends and family.
By making the wedding a big, stressful, expensive deal, you are focusing your entire relationship with this really nice guy down to this burning hotspot of A DAY. Pleae don't do it.

Well, as it currently looks as if there will not be either a wedding or a marriage, all of this advice is pretty much for naught. Suffice to say that the boyfriend has suddenly found his feet frigid and that I am realizing that I cannot continue dating indefinitely nor can I imagine being engaged infinitely.

All good news CG, I'm with Dee on this one though. We did it for about $500 total, under 25 on a guest list, off the menu at a small local restaurant, with a freshly decorated sheet cake & flowers gotten on the way there. It can & has been done cheaply. I imagine that away from NYC it could go down for 2k, and still look just swell. He's hoping that everything goes well. Cheers & Good Luck, 'VJ'